Executive producers Cynthia Heusing (far left) and David Kistenbroker, Jimmy Page (center), producer/screenwriter Allison McGourty and director Bernard MacMahon at the seventy-eighth Venice International Film Festival screening of “Becoming Led Zeppelin”/Photo: Daniele Venturelli/WireImage

Imagine that you’re a college drummer playing music of Led Zeppelin in a cover band back when the band was at its zenith in the early seventies. Skip ahead half a century, and you and your wife are executive producers of the band-authorized documentary “Becoming Led Zeppelin” that went into general release on February 14.

Such is the story of David Kistenbroker and Cynthia Heusing, the Chicago husband-and-wife team who were asked by director Bernard MacMahon in 2018 to “become involved” with his planned documentary on Led Zeppelin.

“I was in New York, as was Bernard, and he called me up late one night,” Kistenbroker explains. “We met up around midnight after he called. He and his wife [and producer and screenwriter] Allison [McGourty] had mentioned a few months before in Chicago about being in the initial phases of working on a documentary on Led Zeppelin.

“That was the Holy Grail of documentaries because it had never been done before, and everybody said it couldn’t be done. I was surprised and very curious about how that would come about, because the band was famously private when it came to that kind of thing.

“He pulled out a two-inch thick binder which was all storyboards. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was the embodiment of unbelievably deep and high-quality research that Bernard and Allison had been conducting.

“[Guitarist] Jimmy Page, in an initial sort of full-day meeting, put Bernard through his paces when contemplating doing the film and having Bernard do it. And Bernard, I think, sort of amazed Jimmy with the amount of research he had done. In fact, Jimmy at one point asked Bernard, ‘What was the name of the band that [vocalist] Robert Plant was singing in before we got together?’ And Bernard said, ‘Obstweedle,’ an obscure and unusual name. It happened to be correct because he had done all the work ahead of time. And Jimmy said, ‘Okay, proceed.’

“Then Bernard proceeded to tell me the news that the band, all the members and [late drummer] John Bonham’s family, had green-lit the project. And would we, Cynthia and I, like to do that with them? And of course, it took me about a nanosecond to say ‘absolutely!’ Then I obviously called my wife immediately and she said ‘yes.’ We were both in.

“It was very exciting and a lot of work ensued, as you might imagine, including conducting the interviews with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and [bassist] John Paul Jones. There would be no narrator; they are the ones who take the audience through their story, their origin story. This was going to be their story in their own voices. And we were very happy about that.

“The concept of the production team from the very beginning was to focus on the ‘becoming’ component of Led Zeppelin. Who were these people? How did they meet? The focus was on the music and how it was developed in that early phase. The very first script and most importantly, the storyboards, were exactly what was delivered in ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin.’

“And of course, one of the things that I think is just so amazing about the film is the discovery and archival work that it took to discover the interview with John Bonham that had never been heard before.”

Bonham passed away accidentally in 1980 and had rarely given interviews, a practice that spread to other band members and contributed to the band’s mystique.

“The lion’s share of what you hear in the movie from John Bonham was found in Australia. A radio station had interviewed John and apparently never aired it. And our archivists, with Bernard and Allison leading the charge, ultimately were able to have the radio station dig deep into its warehouse and archives and find the tape.

“There was an inkling and a rumor that it existed and that had to be run into the ground. In the outreach to radio stations in Australia, Bernard and others were able to identify the DJ who had conducted the interview. That led them down the path to the correct station and then into their archives to unearth and really dig out this tape. It took an amazing amount of archival effort but was well worth it because it’s so central to the movie.

“It just weaves into the entire story with the present-day interviews of the three surviving members in such a beautiful way. And to see the truly human reactions of the three surviving members in hearing John speak for the first time on that interview that had not been heard was pretty amazing. I thought it really added an amazing element to the movie.

“You’re seeing the three surviving members in real time as they hear John speaking. You can see the human emotion on their faces, especially given what he was speaking about: his relationships with them and how he felt about them in the band. Just amazingly beautiful words from John Bonham.

“We had many, many late-night phone calls with Bernard and Allison along the way. This is the first film we have participated in making, and the making of an independent film, I can now say with great confidence, is an extremely difficult endeavor. Anyone who does it, my hat is off to them. The hurdles and pitfalls that you inevitably are faced with can be overwhelming. It’s very difficult to make a quality independent film with the many hurdles there are to overcome. But we did it.”

Executive producers Cynthia Heusing and David Kistenbroker attend “Becoming Led Zeppelin” Los Angeles special screening at TCL Chinese Theater on January 27, 2025 in Hollywood, California/Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for Sony Pictures Classics

How did Kistenbroker and Huesing happen to be asked to be involved with “Becoming Led Zeppelin” given filmmaking was a new endeavor for them?

Kistenbroker is a longtime prominent attorney who was managing partner of the Chicago office of Dechert LLP until his retirement last June. “For the last decade of my career, my title was Global Co-Director of White Collar and Securities Litigation.

“Cynthia was a high-ranking protocol officer for J.P. Morgan and then became their global director of corporate sponsorship. We met on Wall Street.

“The documentary series ‘American Epic’ was the reason and the way we initially got to meet Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty, as it was their series. Robert Redford narrates it and it’s a fantastic piece.

“Our kids had been attending the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and I had been on the board there. In the middle of my term, I was appointed chairman of the board.

“In 2017, Cynthia and I created the Kistenbroker Family Artist in Residence Program there. We empowered the faculty to select the artists because we believe in that approach.

“The first artists in residence that they chose were Bernard and Allison because of ‘American Epic.’ As the people who established the program, that’s how we met them, right here in Chicago.

“Starting in the fall semester of 2017, they spent a year coming back and forth to Chicago to be in residence on campus. There was a curriculum built around them and their ‘American Epic’ project, which was terribly exciting for the school and for everyone involved.

“We got to know them pretty well over the course of that year. And then Bernard and Allison approached us and asked whether we’d ever like to do a project with them? I said, ‘Oh, sure. Let us know.’”

Stonehenge 1973 L-R top row: sub guitarist, Dave Kistenbroker (drums), Dennis Polkow (keyboards), Dan Gillespie (bass); middle row: Brant Kanak (trumpet), Steve Webb (trombone); front row: Louie Lejarza (vocals, percussion)

A remarkable life coincidence is that Kistenbroker, a drummer, and myself, a keyboardist, had actually played some music of Led Zeppelin together—along with music of other bands of the day—in an area cover band called Stonehenge circa 1973-74.

“Yes! You should throw that in, because you lived that with me!”

Of course, this is Kistenbroker’s story, not mine.

“But I did play some Zeppelin music with the author of this article back in the seventies. That was crazy, right?

“Music was a huge part of my life, starting with being in what was an extremely celebrated high school jazz band at Proviso East [in Maywood] with the likes of Doug Beach and other jazz guys you know.

“That was a very important thing that was the predicate before I got together with you guys to be in that cover band. And of course, [trumpeter] Brant Kanak had been in that band with me, and [trombonist] Steve Webb as well. The three of us came out of that program and band, and it was a highly celebrated program at the time we were there. Then Brant, Steve and I along with [bassist] Dan Gillespie found you, and getting together and doing that was just great. You brought singer Louie Lejarza into the band and auditioned guitarists for us and found Bob Legacy, who also played flute with us. That was all a wonderful experience.

“I have told Bernard MacMahon many times that starting my freshman year of college, we were touring on weekends, you and I and the others.”

Stonehenge performed at northern Illinois high schools, colleges and universities. And in southern Wisconsin, also at bars, clubs and taverns, since the drinking age there became eighteen in 1971, until 1986. In 1973, Illinois lowered the drinking age for beer and wine to nineteen, which expanded the band’s opportunities. It returned to twenty-one in 1980.

When touring in Wisconsin, the band would stay at Kistenbroker’s fraternity house at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, which he attended before going on to law school.

“We played at the university, remember that? There were ten thousand kids up there. And every dormitory at the time would have Led Zeppelin blasting out of the windows. That’s no kidding, I remember that very vividly.”

It was at a pre-pandemic Stonehenge band get-together in late 2019—the first in forty-five years—that Kistenbroker mentioned being involved with a Led Zeppelin documentary.

Stonehenge first get-together in forty-five years, December 28 2019. L-R Steve Glos (sound), Dan Gillespie (bass), Dennis Polkow (keyboards), Louie Lejarza (vocals, percussion), David Kistenbroker (drums), Brant Kanak (trumpet); missing: Bob Legacy (guitar, MIA), Steve Webb (trombone, passed July 26, 2016)

“And in 2021, after we were in the pandemic but vaccines had become available, we took a rough cut of the film to the Venice International Film Festival. It was a special showing out of competition, but they dearly wanted it. Everyone had to wear masks, you couldn’t go without one. You also had to have your vaccine certification.

“It was all very surreal and the whole thing was fascinating. It was in the big theater, the Sala Grande on the Lido, and part of the protocol was that every other seat had to be empty.

“Jimmy [Page] was gracious enough to come with us and joined us at the red carpet in Venice. We we all wearing masks but took them off for photographers.

“When the film ended, the Sala crowd went crazy. Jimmy and the production team received a ten-minute standing ovation. We greatly enjoyed that experience.

“We knew the film was not going to be released after Venice, we still had much more work we wanted to do on it. But the timing was right to get the rough cut out, if you will. We still had at least a couple of more years of work to do to get it ready.

“Along the way, we selected and began working with Tom Bernard, the fabulous co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, which has been a great experience for the production team. We’re very pleased. Their PR machine and their distribution machine are brilliant, and we couldn’t be happier.

“We continued working on it, constantly refining the film and getting it ready for release.

“And that led us to last month’s Los Angeles event, to the big Hollywood premiere of ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard on January 27. That was a big red-carpet event and lots of Hollywood and the music industry turned out.

“Earlier this month, Cynthia and I were on the red carpet in London for the first showing there, which was February 4 at Ham Yard. That’s a fabulous theater used for big industry screenings that was invitation-only luminaries and such.

“The next day on February 5, the British Film Institute had the first public IMAX screening in the big BFI Southbank IMAX in London. There was a sold-out crowd and people were going crazy. It was shown on IMAX for the first time in the U.K. and was initially only released in IMAX theaters with a full release in the U.K. starting on February 7 for all screens, not just IMAX.

“I have an office in London with my law firm, so I would go to London all the time for work. But these premieres were something special.”

Though it wasn’t a premiere as such, Kistenbroker found himself—still jet-lagged and unpacking—back in Chicago in time for the February 7 opening weekend of the film’s local IMAX release, taking fourteen members of his family to see it.

“They all wanted to go, so it was like, ’Let’s go!’ What was really great was that here in my hometown of Chicago, that seven o’clock Saturday night show at the Regal City North IMAX on Western Avenue was sold out.

“And people were clapping at the end of musical performances in the film! Isn’t that amazing? And of course, at the end, there was a lot of applause.

“To see a crowd react like that to a movie, to any movie, is really cool. But when it’s one you’ve had a hand in and it’s happening in your own hometown, it’s really special.”

See becomingledzeppelinfilm.com for theaters and showtimes.